From California to Canada

We arrived in Canada a few days ago late on Wednesday night after a bit of a flight delay.

We had a fairly relaxing day in Vancouver on Wednesday, shopping, followed by a long walk from Coal Bay along the seawall to English Bay through Stanley Park. This was followed by We had a great night out at Elixir, a restaurant in Yaletown. The food was excellent!

Yesterday morning we picked up another hire car and headed up to Squamish, a small town about an hour north of Vancouver. The house we are staying in is amazing - snow capped peaks are visible from the front porch and there is a forest and river at the back - it is absolutely beautiful.

Today we hiked up the colossal Stawamus Chief, the world's second largest granite monolith. The "Chief" is famous for rock climbing, but as Andrew wasn't able to climb it due to inclement weather we decided to hike it instead. It was fairly steep - up about 550 metres in 1.5 hours, and a little slippery on the way down, but seemed like a stroll after some of our previous hikes.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Whistler, and then spend some time in Victoria before flying home next weekend.

Before we arrived in Canada we spent two wonderful days /nights in San Francisco - it was a great city and we could have spent more time there. Highlights included:

Two walking tours of San Francisco - about 15kms each day - taking in the Golden Gate Bridge and Park, Fisherman's Wharf, Lombard Street “the most crooked street in the world” (which isn't really), Alamo Square (the old buildings were amazing!).

The Ferry Building - too many amazing restaurants and deli-style gourmet food shops to mention.

A great dinner at Fino, an Italian restaurant downtown (and pretty much across the road from our hotel) which we found by accident.

Great shopping - if only there was more time!